Getting the handle of the currently focused control inside another application

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Getting the handle of the currently focused control inside another application

Hi,

How would one retrieve the handle of the control that currently has focus ? I am using WH_KEYBOARD_LL to capture all keypresses in, and I should be able to determine in which textbox the user is typing in. The code capturing the events has no direct access to the controls in the other application.

I know the win32 function GetFocus() exists for getting the current window handle, but I need something similar for the current control.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Pika

You can pass the GUI thread ID to GetGUIThreadInfo() which will provide you with a GUITHREADINFO.hwndFocus.

Alex K. 2010-07-26 09:41:44

Thanks for the suggestion, but the problem remains the same as with GetFocus(). It seems I cannot get the handles of the controls inside Visual Foxpro. All I can get are the windows and child windows inside the application.

pika81 2010-07-26 10:39:09

Have you spy++'d it? perhaps the controls are not windows but are drawn instead (like MS Forms)

Alex K. 2010-07-26 11:30:21

I just did, but the depth is also limited to windows, toolbars, treeviews, imagelists, not deeper like you would see in a .NET Forms app. I found the following post (http://www.mofeel.net/110-microsoft-public-fox-programmer-exchange/10593.aspx): FoxPro does not use GDI to draw its controls, but it paints them like bitmaps. Seems like it's impossible what I'd like to do.

pika81 2010-07-26 12:11:28

I'm gonna try to find another solution to my problem. Thanks for the help.

pika81 2010-07-26 12:34:17

You can use more general WH_MSGFILTER (it's called within context of the monitored thread so you must create a DLL). The callback gets MSG structure containing all informations about message (handle too).

adf88 2010-07-26 10:27:11

I took a look at the API, the callback also returns a Hwnd, but in the case of Foxpro, there is none. I will have the same problem. Thanks anyway (I didn't know about that hook)

pika81 2010-07-26 12:33:47

ansaurus

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Getting the handle of the currently focused control inside another application

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